St Martins Sermon Notes. March 3, 2002

John 4: 5-42

A woman was feeling insecure about her husband’s affection. She asks, “how come you never say you love me anymore?” He responds, “I told you when we got married that I loved you. If I change my mind I’ll let you know.” Not very convincing? Because love has to be expressed . There are two kinds of love: Our love. God’s love. But God makes both kinds of them.

In the early 1500’s, soon after the discovery of the Americas, Europeans began making the long journey across the Atlantic. Some were hoping to find gold, a new life, others wanted adventure and some wanted religious freedom. One of these was a Spanish conquistador by the name of Ponce de Leon. He and his men were the first Europeans to explore North America. In his quest to find gold, he had many encounters with Indian tribes, who had stories not only of gold, but of a spring that had magical powers. Anyone who drank of it was healed of any disease or physical ailment that they might have, the Indians said. Though he made it his life-long goal to find this spring, he was unsuccessful and died from a poisoned arrow in 1521. Here in the 21st century, we’re still looking for the fountain to cure all our ills.

Jesus and his disciples had been travelling by foot over rough terrain since early morning. The sun was beating down, it was 12 noon (the sixth hour), and someone had forgotten to pack lunch for the group. So the troops went into the next town to get some food, while Jesus got some rest, and sat down by the well.

Jesus was a Jew, and they were in Samaria. The Jews prided themselves on their full-blooded heritage. They were God’s chosen people. If you weren’t a Jew, you were nobody. And only one thing could be worse than being a nobody, that was being a Samaritan. That tribe was a mixture of Jews and other races. Half-breeds with half a Bible. A melting pot, seldom stirred. Anyone that had mixed racial blood was considered untouchable, not worthy of a Jew’s notice, a traitor. Jews and Samaritans avoided each other.

Enter stage left: a woman with a past. Now if you met her on the street carrying her water pot, you wouldn’t know anything about her. Behind her mask, the kind we all carry – she was running on empty, with a sense of failure. She felt unlovable, unforgivable. She was the biblical equivalent of Joan Collins. She liked men, and her moral life was the joke of the community. She defended herself and discredited herself at the same time. And there was always someone to take advantage of her need. We are left to imagine the kind of domestic abuse she endured. The amount of brutality, rejection, insecurity, isolation and shame this woman experienced. She must have been an attractive woman- and yet a very needy person looking for intimacy and significance. I’m sure she felt anything but pretty as she came to the well alone, a woman who was seeking deeper things, but in all the wrong places. Her life had taken a turn for the hearse. More than a well, she was in need of Ponce de Leon’s spring that cures all ills. She was the fish that John West rejects. She wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there. Most people went to the well in the early morning when it was 20 degrees cooler. She faced the heat of the day because she wanted to avoid the hot stares and scorching laughter of the other women of the city. The woman was also surprised by Jesus speaking to her because he was a man, addressing a woman in public. Men didn’t talk to women then unless it was to ask “what’s for dinner”. (obviously different to today’s husbands!) Women had nothing to offer in a man’s world. They were without respect. Their only value was in their service to man. So He says to her “Give Me A Drink.” And she’s mildly surprised, going on badly shocked. It wasn’t just the Samaritan/Jew racial divide that threw her, she was astonished that He was speaking to a female. It was considered totally improper for a man to initiate a conversation with a woman especially when there weren’t others around to make sure that nothing improper happened. Many men had initiated conversations with her in the past, only to exploit her. As far as she knew, perhaps that’s why Jesus had approached her. Jesus was risking a lot by reaching out to her and ignoring the social rules. His reputation would be under attack if anyone found out and chose to put their own interpretation of what took place. Jesus wasn’t politically correct. There’s no obvious valid reason for getting involved with her. I once drove home a parishioners young teenage daughter who was in a bad way. As I neared her house her elder brother who’d never met me exclaimed at his sisters condition and then asked me “Are you from the church?” Looking for a valid reason for my involvement.

After she fences with Him a little, He says “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” He cuts to the chase with her. Straight to her need. She questions His motives in asking for a drink, and rather than being side-tracked, He goes right to the point and offers her the spiritual drink she’s desperate for. But she misunderstands what He means by water, and thinks he’s talking home delivery, with new plumbing.

Never mind, He says, go and get your husband. Now the bets are on the table. The dealer calls her and she’s been bluffing. What is this guy, from the thought police or something? She tries to fake it – “I have no husband”. She probably hoped He’d drop the issue and move on. After all, “I have no husband” could mean that her husband is dead, and Jesus wouldn’t want to worsen her bereavement by bringing it up. Or it may be that she’s never been married, and surely Jesus wouldn’t want to push that issue and remind her that she’s an old maid. So the response is almost cryptic in its brevity. “I have no husband” But she won’t get off the hook that easily. Jesus commends her for her honesty. “You have well said, ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had 5, and the 6th is on layby” Suddenly this woman realizes that he must have some kind of supernatural ability. It dawns on her now that she is talking with someone who is much more than a dusty, weary traveller. He knows details about her life. He speaks with authority. He promises answers no man can give. They had only spoken a few words and He saw right through her. At last, a man who looks at her soul instead of her body. Finally, someone sees her potential and not her past. She assumes that he’s a prophet, so she asks him a religious question, always good for getting the spotlight off yourself and onto something more comfortable. There was a running argument between the Jews and Samaritans about where the real place of worship should be – on Mt. Zion, the mountain in Jerusalem where the temple had been built, or Mt. Geranium, the sacred mountain in Samaria. She was trying to turn attention off herself, but when she did, she encountered another truth that was just as difficult for her as the truth about herself – she came face to face with what Jesus was after. She wants to argue religion. Jesus gets her to face reality.

Enter stage right: Jesus’ disciples returning, absolutely staggered to find Him talking with a woman and a Samaritan. He fell in their estimation. To converse with a strange woman in public, especially about religious matters, wasn’t on. The Rabbis of Jesus day taught that a man should not even address his own wife in public. If he wants her opinion, he’ll give it to her. They taught that a Jew should not even help a Samaritan woman if she were suddenly to go into labour. An ancient Jewish men’s prayer was “Blessed are You, O Lord, Who has not made me a woman.” You can warm your hands on the heat those comments generate. Although her situation made her worthy of death by stoning 6 times over, Jesus not only relates to her past, he frees her from her it. How liberating these responses must have been to this woman. She is all too aware of her own pitiful condition and her shameful life. She is locked up under the Law, knowing nothing else about God except what the Law reveals, and how helpless she has been to keep it; violating it daily, yet not knowing where to go for repentance or forgiveness; And here is this prophet offering her living water, and true spiritual worship. Now she wants to tell her community. But she leaves her water jar behind, the reason she went there in the first place – either because she was so overtaken by what she had experienced that she forgot it, or she knew she was coming back. Either way, she leaves Jesus unceremoniously and without explanation. But now she is a woman on a mission. She’s going to find her people and tell them about the truth she’s discovered. She is 100% honest now, and tells the people in town that Jesus told her everything she ever did. She wants to tell others about the great Messiah she found. What a model for us encountering Jesus and being changed by His love. Jesus showed her the kind of love that won’t be stopped by weariness, by differences between you and the others, or by any history that others might have on you.. And today Jesus still gives that kind of love to us. No matter how fast we run, His love is more powerful than the weariness He feels of chasing after us. No matter how much sin we have accumulated in our life, Jesus is willing to take hold of us, and free us. Do you love people that kind of way? Before you answer, let me remind you that love is something that is expressed through action. No action, no love. “I’m too tired to send a note to that person who hasn’t been here in a while. The people in my this neighbourhood are different than me. Many of them are rich. I don’t know how to relate to richies. It scares me so much, I won’t try.” “There’s just too much history between me and them. I know too much about them. They’ve hurt me and those I love too many times.” Those dog-ate-my-homework excuses are made by people who don’t have Jesus love. They allow obstacles to stop them from expressing His love for others.

Did you notice the line Jesus used to begin the conversation on that hot day? He didn’t question her about beliefs on the pre-tribulation rapture. He didn’t ask her about the last time that she had been in church. He didn’t query whether she believed in baptizing by immersion or sprinkling. He asked her for a drink of water from the well. That was something that she could understand. Water was what she could identify with. Jesus took something that she knew about and compared it what He wanted her to experience. He used her desire for water to create a thirst for spiritual values. In their conversation. He could have gone on to tell her everything she has ever done. Her going from guy to guy was only the “tip of the iceberg,” but it dawns on her that He knows the whole iceberg. Jesus doesn’t require us to be holy before He accepts us. If He did, we would still be unforgiven and condemned in our sin. Jesus came down to our level, met us where we are in order that we might go where He is. How far does a person have to come before we will interact with them? Do they have to come through the doors of this church before we show them the love of Christ? Do they have to clean up their language, wear the right clothes, use the right Bible, and learn clich © conversation before we will make them a part of our fellowship? If we are going to reach people, we can’t just open up the doors of the church and invite them in for a test drive. We have to go out into their comfort zone, speak the message in terms they understand, and love them in whatever condition we find them. It might make us uncomfortable, especially if they want to kick the tyres. But it will show them that we love them just as they are. We must learn to offer forgiveness to those who need it – Not condemnation. This is precisely the model Jesus gives us in relating to people who are hurting and hungry for love.

Think of the people that you encounter on an everyday basis. There’s the parents of the other students at your daughters gym class, the person who checks out your groceries at Safeway, the guy who fixes your car, the parents of other students at your child’s class, your doctor, chemist, dentist or hairdresser. You already interact with these people. Why not add one more component to your interaction? Why not include spiritual values? Talk about the spring that cures all ills. P Fusion’s Mel Garvin and his wife occasionally go to their favourite restaurant in Launceston. As Jenny is in the habit of doing, she said to the waitress, who had just delivered their meal: “We’re going to pray grace together here in a minute. Is there anything we can pray for you about?” The waitress was somewhat stunned and said, “Does it show that bad?” She became emotional and had to walk away. When she came back she said, “This has been the worst day of my life. This morning my grandfather died. And then I just found out that my boyfriend has been cheating on me the whole time we have been going together. Its cool to know that there are people who care.” That act of reaching out in Christian love and concern brought a person closer to God. A young salesman was disappointed about losing a big sale, and as he talked with his sales manager he lamented, “I guess it just proves you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” The manager replied, “Son, your job isn’t to make him drink. It’s to make him thirsty.

The woman at the well learned that the first part of putting away a particular sin is simply replacing the sewer water of evil with the pure water of God. That means whatever that habitual sin is that we have quit a million times and keep going back to must be dropped off at the feet of Jesus and left there. It’s not that we can’t let it go. We don’t want to let it go. The saddest thing I ever heard was in Burma last month – a young opium addict admitting, “I just don’t want to ever have to live without it.” But in God’s justice, we’re just as hooked if we say “I can’t live a full life without . (fill in the blank with your favourite sin).” Jesus taught the woman that indulgence is not a rival to spirituality, but a pointer to it. Our thirst for intimate relationships, money, and power are really a desire for ultimate meaning that only He can give. When the woman’s deepest thirst was satisfied, all other things took their rightful place in her life. The problem is not that people are getting intimate, but they aren’t getting intimate enough: We focus on the flesh instead of going deeper, into the soul. A counsellor at a youth Bible camp had had an exhausting day; the guys in his cabin were asleep, and he was dead to the world. Then there came a dim awareness: Ants were crawling all over his body. He says “I was so tired, and sleep felt so good, that I resisted rousing myself. I knew that if I were roused even a little, I would have to accept that my sleeping bag had become an ant freeway. I didn’t want to know the truth, so for a minute I tried to fight it. At some deep level, I told myself that sleep was the reality and the ants were a dream.” Truth is the ants in our sleeping bag. Truth attempts to rouse us out of our sleep and confront us with reality. But we keep trying to ignore it and go back to sleep. Waking up means that I have to face reality, see the none-too-pretty truth about myself, and respond to the claims of Jesus Christ. More than that, it means I have to change. It is small wonder many prefer to stay asleep. Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” How we respond to truth determines the direction of our lives, the quality of our existence and our destiny. PP If Ponce de Leon had ever discovered the spring that cures all ills, his response would have been to hide it so that he would be the only one who ever got to use its waters. The woman that Jesus encountered at the well that day was more successful than Ponce de Leon. She did find the spring that cures all ills. His name was Jesus. But instead of keeping the fountain for herself, she chose to tell everyone that she knew. She was no longer scared of their stares, she didn’t feel old and used-up anymore. What made the difference was that she had experienced Jesus acceptance, and was able to express His love to all she encountered, because she was freed from condemnation. PP In the end, you and I stand at the well with Jesus. We bring Him all our confusion and pain, and He read us like this morning’s paper. We come just as we are with our past mistakes and present struggles and there at the well Jesus calls us to be His people, to drink and be satisfied from His spring of living water. Have you packed for the overbooked flight to the Promised Land?

Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

Kevin Gray